A METHOD FOR MAKING LARGE AGGLOMERATED ICE CRYSTALS FOR FREEZE CONCENTRATION

A method to agglomerate ice crystals to produce a large ice crystal in glucose solution was proposed. Ice crystals were agglomerated and the agglomerates fused to a large ice crystal in a common batch crystalli zer in which the heat for ice crystallization was removed through the wall of the crystallizer by the coolant circulating Keys to making lar ge agglomerated ice crystals are to keep the initial supercooling, the temperature difference between the lowest temperature initially attai ned and the freezing point of the solution less than 0.2 K and to intr oduce seed ice crystals more than 6% of the solution weight to trigger the ice crystallization. The large agglomerated ice crystals were pro duced regardless of the crystal size distribution of the seed ice crys tals. However ice crystals failed to agglomerate in glucose solutions of more than 20%, though gigantic ice crystals that have seldom been r eported before were produced in 10% glucose solution.